Walgreens — Local services in Forest Lake

Finally had enough and switched pharmacies this weekend. I know the crew when I worked there has completely changed and there are really nice people working in that pharmacy but it's so slow that I swear half the time they must be all on break. I went in this Friday night at 8:40 pm to fill a prescription that I figured I would pick up the next day. I was already by Walgreens and figured I would stop in and ask for a refill. That was a horrible idea. I walked in and there was a lady in front of me being helped. Nobody at the drive thru. They were going back and forth on something with one of her fills. It had been about 8-10 minutes at this point and a car pulls up in the drive thru. They then have to go on the floor and fill this prescription and paged somebody to do this. Then the pharmacy goes to help the drive thru well I still stand in line. I figured well that sucks but I am next. About another 7 minutes pass and they get the drive thru done. In the meantime the lady needing a fill is still standing at the counter. The prescription finally gets brought up and they check it and get the labels for it. At this point it's been another 10 minutes. As they are ringing her up and talking to her another car pulls up in the drive thru. They finally complete the transaction and the lady slowly grabs her stuff. I look at my watch and it's now 9:15pm and I have been in the exact same spot in the area you are suppose to line up to be helped. I haven't moved or anything. I have had workers on the floor acknowledge me standing there. They go to the drive thru and help that person instead of helping me next. I had enough and left and had my prescriptions transferred to another pharmacy the next day. The wait times to just talk to a pharmacy staff to see if your prescription is ready or if you just want to fill one is extremely poor. If you want to run a skeleton crew then shut down the drive thru. Every time I have gone in to get a prescription or get a refill going I have ended up spending at least 20 minutes standing in line before getting helped. Doesn't matter the time of the day either. It's extremely poor and back when I worked for Walgreens this would never have been accepted. I want to say all positive stuff but it's been a year of dealing with this. It's just not acceptable. The store is always clean and organized though and the staff is friendly. It's just the wait to talk to somebody in the pharmacy is way to long and not acceptable. I can understand talking to somebody and they say it will be a hour if not longer to fill. I understand that just not having to wait 20+ minutes to talk to somebody to...

For those looking here for a pharmacy, do yourself a favor and keep looking. I've been dealing with picking up prescriptions from this place for the past 12-18 months, lord knows why I've stuck it out this long. Likely because I don't have that much to pick up and I'd like to think I'm something of an optimist. But this is ridiculous. I can probably count on 1 hand how many times they've successfully accomplished the apparently daunting task of having a single bottle of meds ready. Expect to be given an excuse at the window, told they're going to start getting it ready for you, and it'll be 30-45 minutes. Same rundown whether the prescription was sent in a few hours in advance or a few days. They will wait for you to hit that window before doing their job. I commute from Forest Lake to Golden Valley every day, and there's nothing more refreshing than driving past my house into town on my way home, waiting in line, asking for a single bottle of a prescription, and turning a 5-10 minute pickup process into an excuse at the window and another hour out of my day gone after a few spent on the road.

This is just the routine expectations. Stick it out with them for a while and you might get to go through some gems like being harassed with 7 calls in a day while you're working to be notified a prescription is ready. Only to show up and, to really nobody's surprise, it's not ready. Filling it will take 30-45 minutes.

Embarrassingly incompetent. Beyond excited to drive back into town, grab my bag, and never return. Here's to hoping they managed to fill a bottle in the time it took me...

I have been feeling frustrated lately and am going to switch to a different pharmacy. The drive through is very slow. I can have 5 cars ahead of me and it takes 40 minutes to get through. It's like they are dropping off a prescription and waiting for it to be filled right then. I'm not sure if that is what is really happening or not.

The wait times are terrible. Should it really take 5 or 6 hours to get a prescription filled? That has happened a few times.

Another time I requested a refill on a medication but it was due for the yearly prior authorization. They got the prior authorization but never filled it. I asked why it wasn't filled when the prior authorization was obtained and she had no explanation. Not even an "I will look in to it." I had 2 pills left. I take it for nerve pain so obviously I didn't want to run out.

Now 3 days ago I requested a refill on a medication that went to my old physician. I called Walgreens pharmacy and told them it needed to go to my primary physician. She said that she would send it to my primary physician. It was never done. I was going to pick it up today and it is from the wrong physician. I called them today and they have no record of my request to send it to a different physician. Again nothing about looking in to it. This tells me that this is just going to keep happening and they aren't going to do anything about it. It's like they don't care.

I DIDN'T EVEN GET AN APOLOGY.

How many other people are having the same thing...